“How will we know if
she’s succeeding?” Superman whispered to Jason Blood.

“We’ll know,” Batman
graveled definitely.

Jason regarded Batman coldly
and, as the question had been directed at him and not Bruce, he turned to
Superman and answered it.

“I’m not sure there will
be any perceptible signs on this plane,” he said apologetically.

“We’ll know,” Batman
repeated.

The seconds ticked by in a
slow, ominous rhythm. Everyone
remained still until Superman and Jason abruptly turned, as if trying to confirm
a faint and not quite audible sound. Etrigan
didn’t say a word but calmly put his arm around Hella.
The sound that wasn’t exactly a sound grew more distinct.

“Is that… music?”
Jason asked.

“It’s her,” Batman
said, nodding towards Hella.

The noise rose to become
distinctly identifiable as Hella’s mindvoice, but it “sang,” not with her
usual monotone, but as several different melodic voices, all female, softly
warbling some ancient Nordic lament.

Etrigan explained:

“Every mortal knows
One day he breathes his final breath.
Not so us, these anxious woes.
‘Tis new to us, these thoughts of death.”

“No one is going to die,”
Batman growled. “Selina will get
there… Be ready.”

The clock ticked
again… ticked… ticked… until the tension got the best of Jason and he took a
sharp, and sharply audible, breath. The
release was contagious, and in the next second Superman echoed it.
Another second ticked by, and then the edgy silence was cut by a third
sharp intake of breath which made everyone start.

“Good heavens,” Alfred
exclaimed as everyone turned.

“Alfred, I said stay away
until I gave the all-clear,” Batman graveled.

“I could not, in good
conscience, sir, when the situation was clearly—”

“Never mind, there’s no
time now. Go to the far side of the house and stay—”

KREEEEEEEEEE

“Too late,” Batman
muttered as the ear-splitting wail of Canary Cry sounded just before the wall
beside the clock exploded into shards as an AU chimera of Superman was hurled
through it and a chimera of that world’s Alfred Pennyworth, invisible a moment
before, ran to his crumpled form.

“My word,” the present
Alfred exclaimed.

“I’ll explain later,”
Batman said gruffly as his mind-controlled doppelganger entered through the
shattered wall and crouched to attack. While
Alfred gaped, the jaded observers barely registered these familiar developments.
Five pairs of eyes: human, Kryptonian and demonic, all scanned the
emerging scene for a single figure who might vary from the well-worn script.

After a moment,
“Catwoman”—the goggled variety—came into view as she always did
through the dark mist of settling rubble. She
was still in the cave, at the base of the staircase now visible through the
ruptured wall. She was hunched over, as always, protecting her
ears from the excruciating Canary Cry… she rose, just as always… she reached
for her whip, just as always… and then… then… she froze, midreach, and
shuddered as her face puckered into a mute howl of outrage as she realized what
she was wearing. Her whole upper
body spasmed in revolted shock, and she seemed to twist in several upward
half-turns, as if trying to extract herself from some clinging, stinking goo.

“That’s her,” Batman
announced.

Green Lantern was zapping
wildly around the chamber, trying to prevent Flash from reaching Despero—while Catwoman ripped the goggles off her face and flung them into the power
beam. They popped into a ball of
green flame before falling as a flaccid ember, and then crumbling to ash as they
hit the cave floor. None of the observers needed Batman’s skill to read her
lips clearly: “I. wore. goggles!”

“C’mon, c’mon,”
Batman urged. “Selina, you’re not moving where you did in the old
timeline, get out of the way, get out of the way.”

She shook herself again and
dashed deeper into the cave just as Aquaman hurled a huge stone fragment at the
spot where she stood. She ran past
the point where the observers could see but where they knew the vortex was
located.

Tense seconds passed during
which Superman, then Jason, then Etrigan, and finally Hella all stole glances at
Batman.

“Breathe,” Superman
suggested.

“We could never see beyond
what’s visible from this room,” he said tersely.
“We don’t know what she’s up against back there.
She could—”

At that moment, she was
hurled back into view with what looked to be Martian Manhunter coiled around her
thigh and Flash around his. They
landed in an unseemly ball, from which Catwoman was the first to emerge,
stabbing Flash with jagged shards of purple glass.
He seemed to be apologizing, he was trying to protect her, but his
protests were cut short by another “chain” of hurdling heroes, this time
Black Canary, Green Arrow, Aquaman, and a sizable chunk of the display case
containing Jason Todd’s costume.

Catwoman marched furiously up
from the cave and into the study, as heedless of the airborne energy beams,
batarangs, and heroes as she was in her own reality where these were formless
phantoms. For one unable to see into their world, she judged admirably
where the half circle of observers would be standing in the study and waved the
shards of broken glass furiously at them, mouthing a single name distinctly:
“JASON!” She
happened to be standing directly in front of Etrigan as she said it, and he
gestured with a gamely grin for Blood to take this one himself, by all means.

In the chaos of the battle,
none of the Justice League seemed to notice the one non-participant removing
herself from the melee. Only
Despero turned to watch the deranged woman waving her arms at nothing like a
South American dictator haranguing an imaginary populace.

“Jason, do something,”
Batman hissed.

“Яέςŧįŧůo
φŗБιs,” Jason Blood decreed, and Catwoman started as the
fragments in her hand quivered and rose, flashing white, and then floating for a
split second as a reconstituted whole before dropping heavy again into her hand.
She offered a grateful smile-shrug before being flung into the wall by
the backlash of a green energy mace aimed at Flash.

The Batman of the present
flinched, the instinct to act colliding fullspeed with the rational knowledge
that there was nothing he could do. Jason
was able to affect that world, he was able to repair the orb for her, but all
Bruce could do was stand helpless and watch while the woman he loved was in
danger. Mind, body and soul
all screamed for him to do something, but there was nothing, literally nothing
he could possibly… No one but
Clark noticed the flinch, and he silently placed a hand on Bruce’s shoulder.

In the throes of the energy
beam, Catwoman wrapped and twisted her body swiftly around the orb, hoping to
shield the fragile ball from the impact, but causing her back to hit the wall
with a force she clearly didn’t expect. She
seemed dazed for a moment, then shook it off and turned her attention to the orb
she was cradling—and her face creased again into that lemon-pucker of
disgust.

“THIS WOMAN HAS NO TITS!”
she mouthed in distinctly outraged contempt—

—And the Bruce of the
present let out a thankful breath. That
she could still rant about her appearance in the face of all that chaos and
turmoil…

While her outburst had no
more sound than the rest of the anomaly in the here and now, it was clearly
audible in Catwoman’s reality, for Green Arrow froze mid-swing and turned to
her in disbelief—permitting Batman to smash him in the back of the head with
a brass bookend. His opponent
vanquished, he turned his attention to Catwoman, as Martian Manhunter swung
Superman into a headlock.

“It’s begun,” Jason
muttered. “If she can’t get into position because of Batman’s… attentions,
this could be exceedingly—”

“She can do it,” Batman
declared with calm certainty.

As if to validate his words,
Catwoman’s hip, back and shoulder dipped as one, undulating in a graceful
waving motion that seemed to both yield to Batman’s aggressive attack and
blend with it, sending him sliding over her onto Green Arrow’s crumpled mass,
while Despero lifted Hawkman by the throat and yanked the wings from his back in
a single vicious stroke.

“My favorite part,”
Catwoman’s mouthed, squirming out of the way before Batman could rise.
“Now cue the clock,” she said, racing to get to her mark.

As he had every 43 minutes
since the anomalies began, Hawkman picked up the grandfather clock and brought
it crashing down onto Batman’s head. Batman
answered with a fierce uppercut… and Catwoman reached her position by the
bookcase.

“Big
red robot,” she said, extracting the yagi baton from her sleeve just as Red
Tornado entered.

“Superman,”
she breathed, sliding her finger through
the little circle in the base of the witch orb and then holding it high over her
head, eying the spot where the claw-footed table would rest if it hadn’t been
blasted into splinters.

Superman
charged—as always… Catwoman’s
heart pounded.Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and Black Canary fell on Red
Tornado—as always… Her heart pounded.Despero grabbed Superman, and the room yellowed with the glow of his
telepathic mind-beam… And Catwoman’s heart pounded as she brought the
yagi baton into alignment with the witch orb, holding it as low as possible, so
a perfect arc might form from the claw-footed table through the orb and into the
baton, an arc which would pass directly through the spot where—

—A
spark of pink-white fire exploded—

—and
Zatanna materialized, hovering grandly over the room.

“POTS!”
Zatanna ordered —and the room erupted into a rainbow of sizzling coils of
snaking, snapping lightbeams. A
trio of twisting funnel energy sprung into being at the point where, in other
worlds, the claw-footed table still stood un-obliterated.
It thrust in an upward arc towards the ceiling, warping around Zatanna in
a cocoon of glowing energy, and arced back down into the yagi baton held by
Catwoman, jolting her into a rigid stance as one paralyzed by a high voltage
shock. Both her arms, the right
holding the witch orb aloft, the left holding the yagi baton low, shook with the
magical voltage surging between the two objects, and she winced and squinted
from the unexpected heat of the lightning-like energy. The effect coursing up her arms was akin to a powerful and
constantly shifting recoil, as if she was holding high-pressure hoses in place
with unimaginable energies gushing through.

One
of the snapping snakeheads of energy whipping free of the main arc passed
through Hawkman’s severed wings, igniting a smoky, smoldering flame that none
of the leaguers, mind-controlled or free, seemed to notice.
Everyone’s attention was riveted on Zatanna, her body contorting wildly
in the honeycomb of energy thrashing and crackling around her.

Sounds began to bleed into
the present reality, the crackling of the beams in the anomaly, a baby crying,
Bruce’s voice “No, no, I like going,” and then in an entirely different
tone of voice “How about blue,” morphing
finally into a pained murmur “You’re hurt. You lost a lot of blood…”
Selina’s voice answered “Not that much”
“But you just got back from patrol…” “A crimefighter with a
purse? I don’t think so, Stud.” “I wasn’t sleeping. I heard the whole
thing. Bruce, what in God’s name
is going on with you and the League?”

Superman jumped back as the
ghostly chimeras of other Bruce Waynes folded and unfolded in the space in front
of him, one in the batsuit, one not. Each
were seated at the claw-footed table across from—Superman blinked—a
variety of figures that faded in and out of visibility, but all of which bore an
unsettling resemblance to Lex Luthor.

“I knew it was true, but I
don’t think I really believed it,” he muttered, inaudible over the rising
noise level.

“Hella,”
Jason said, straining to be heard as Selina’s scream from the original seeing
joined the other sounds rising in a whirlpool of strangely ordered chaos.
“Hella,” He repeated, then paused tersely. “…Be ready…”

Superman
explained quickly to Alfred, “When Zatanna’s power is gone, the crisis is
presumably ended and our ability to see into this reality would cease.
Hella’s job is to hold the visual portal open from that point on.”

Despero—like everyone—was momentarily distracted by Zatanna’s arrival and the
resulting pyrotechnics. But he
recovered himself quickly and returned his attention to Superman, captive in his
clutches. Deciding that whatever
the explosive arc of energy was, he’d rather face it with Superman in his
power, he resumed his effort to take control of Superman’s mind.

“Etrigan,
quickly,” Jason prompted.

But
before the demon could speak, the telepathic beam appeared again from
Despero’s third eye. But instead
of blasting into Superman’s forehead as before, it shot off-course at a sharp
angle, tilting sideways away from Superman and across the room into the yagi
baton. Everyone in the present reality gasped as the beam hit the
baton and Catwoman contorted from the force of the hit. She struggled to keep her balance as the new force flowed
directly into the baton, while the energy flow from Zatanna continued to be
drawn, somewhat more erratically, into the baton by way of the orb.
More snake-like wisps began striking out from the main beams and snapping
randomly around the room, and Catwoman strained to keep the orb positioned
between the baton and the Zatanna beams.

In
the present reality, the sound increased, the extra power vibrating through the
room like a giant generator. Batman took one look at Catwoman, struggling to
keep control of the power coursing around her, and he threw all logic aside. He
leaped across the room toward her, braced himself right behind where she stood
and tried to wrap his arms around her, trying to provide additional support, to
add his strength to hers… anything
to somehow help her out. Of course, his hands passed through her as if she was a
ghost and he stumbled to the side.

Superman
was instantly beside him and grabbed his shoulders, half-keeping him from
falling and half-holding him back from trying that again. Surprisingly, Batman
accepted the hold, instantly realizing the futility of his attempt. With just a
hint of desperation creeping onto his face, he turned to Jason.

“Despero’s
an alien,” Batman barked, “His power is from the Flame of Py’tar on
his world; it isn’t magic. That shouldn’t be happening—”

“Etrigan,
quickly,” Jason repeated. “Bruce,
it may not be what you classify as magic, but it is power driven by will.
That is essentially magic. The
yagi baton seems to think so.”

“DO
SOMETHING!” he ordered.

Not
impressed am I, thus far.
The Flames of Hell trump
The Flame of Py’tar…Chump.

The
beam of light from Despero’s eye dissolved instantly into nothingness.

In
the present reality, Superman whispered to Batman, “Power driven by will. Bruce, that means if Hal uses his ring, it would be drawn into the baton the
same way. She can’t possibly
handle it.”

Bruce
flinched again and felt Superman’s hands squeeze gently on his shoulder, more in
a comforting gesture than anything else. “I
know,” he rasped.

Now still the blood of
Kalanor.
And Will to cag’ed minds restore.

Despero
stiffened and froze where he stood, and the mind-controlled Leaguers shook their
heads in confusion. Etrigan smiled
smugly and posed for Hella, flexing his muscles.

Catwoman
repositioned, clearly relieved by the minor improvement in her situation but
still struggling to keep control of the orb and baton while the original power
beams thickened and glowed whiter. The
free wisps and tendrils grew fewer and the light burned redder and thickened
more—then bluer as the last snapping wisps joined the main arc—and
finally the light beams blushed into a full, rich purple.

The cacophony of layered sound fell away.

With
effort, Catwoman slowly brought her arm holding the yagi baton up and over her
head, until at last she could bring it into contact with the witch orb.
The instant the baton touched the orb, Zatanna’s body arched violently
backward until her head nearly touched her heels, then she snapped right and
left within the glowing web of purple light, like a tree branch twisting in
brutal gale-force winds. Despite
the physical strain of maintaining her position, the corner of Catwoman’s lip
curled upward into the subtlest of feline smiles.
She hissed—and all the observers started—for that one sound
echoed, clear and distinct and unnaturally loud, from the otherwise muted
anomaly. All other sound had ceased
the moment the arc-light went purple, a slight re-pressurization had pulsed in
everyone’s ears at the sudden eerie silence—and now before anyone could
process what was happening, that hiss, feline and feral, sliced the
silence—nature herself unleashing her wild, untamable scorn and her final,
unappealable judgment.

As
one, Zatanna, Catwoman, and Hella jerked and the purple arc of light blinked
into nothingness.

“It
is done,” Hella said, a harsh strain deepening her normally dead monotone.
“The window into this world would close but for my hand that holds it
open. Speak, Dark Mortal, when thou
hast seen thy fill, and thy home and manor shall be thine once more.
Of here and now alone and tainted by no other prospect.
One world and one truth, one—”

“Jason,
it worked?” Superman asked urgently. “They
didn’t see what she did?”

“The
spell I cast is called ßųŁŁą Îģήσŧųş,”
Jason said, watching the Leaguers as critically as Batman was, seeking any
clue as to their precise state of mind. “A spell of validation, if you will, obscuring that which
would contradict this League’s pride, and allowing them to see only that which
affirms their worldview.”

“And
since it’s inconceivable to this League that they’ve been cosmic outlaws and
that it would fall on Catwoman to save the situation by stripping one of their
own of her powers…” Superman mused.

“They
never saw it,” Jason concluded. “They
seem to believe it was Zatanna who stopped Despero, just as before.”

They
watched as the League argued among themselves.

“It’s
not inconceivable to all of them,” Bruce noted gravely. “That world’s Batman, J’onn and Wally all looked her
way in the first moments after Despero was frozen.
Batman and J’onn were still shaking off his influence, and whatever
they glimpsed, they evidently attributed to that.
Wally, I’m not so sure. He’s
glanced at her a couple times, but then he realized they’re playing
‘settle the dust’ and redirected his attention to the League proper—for
now.”

The
cluster of heroes blocked the clock passage and the cave beyond, making it
impossible for Catwoman to reach the vortex unnoticed.
Instead, she ducked quietly behind Bruce’s desk.
In the present reality, Batman stood closest to the desk and watched with
some amusement as she opened the drawer “through” the space occupied by his
leg, and quietly stashed the orb inside it.
Then she backed quietly away to tend to Alfred as her double had always
done.

The
Batman of the present calmly opened the drawer, and there sat the orb.

“Zatanna’s
magic,” Jason said. “Take it quickly. For Selina’s safety and ours, it
cannot be removed too swiftly from the vicinity.
Pennyworth, if you would, as quickly as may be, take this item to some
distant part of the house—not the cave, for these Leaguers may yet return
there. Take it to a part of the
house that is private and little used.”

Alfred
nodded and did as he was asked, hesitating for only a moment at the door to
regard Catwoman helping his otherworldly twin to his feet.

“Little
help here,” Catwoman said—as she knew her goggled double always had at
this point in the proceedings to announce her presence.
In fact, she spoke a little sooner than the double did, but she was so
infuriated by what she was hearing, she wanted to make sure she was in the
conversation before Zatanna attempted to poof out.
She had witnessed this scene countless times in the anomaly: the League
clustered around Zatanna, the gestures, the hair toss, so she knew exactly when
Zatanna planned to depart. But hearing
the words that went with the pointing and headshakes—

“I
used magic to stop him and rid you all of his influence.
I didn’t ask for your permission or for a show of hands.”

—the
italicized barbs directed so pointedly at Batman.
Even though this wasn’t her Bruce and she knew nothing of him, it made
Selina’s blood boil. She wondered
if the “rule of three” about using magic to inflict harm applied to
non-magically shoving a yagi baton down someone’s throat.
Or up their—

Whatever.
She had to do something. So
she jostled her shoulder to support Alfred’s weight and spoke.

“Little
help here,” she repeated, a little louder this time.

Batman
turned to her, concerned, and spoke on cue.

“You’re
both wounded, here let me—”

“Your
rug is on fire,” she pointed out coolly, interrupting just as her counterpart
always had, but undoubtedly with different words.

“And
now I have some unfinished business to attend to,” Zatanna announced
importantly behind him.

“Rug
is on fire,” Catwoman repeated, though no one but Alfred was listening to her.

“You
mean the Secret Society,” Batman spat, wheeling back on Zatanna.

“Hawkman’s
wings, been smoldering on the floor there for a couple minutes now,” Selina
pointed out to Alfred. “Just sprouted a little red flame…”

“I
created this mess, Batman,” Zatanna said, clearly building to a big exit line.

“…and
is quietly devouring the Aubusson carpet while these idiots stand around
belaboring the obvious…”

“ll’I
naelc ti pu,” Zatanna concluded.

Absolutely
nothing happened following Zatanna’s incantation, and an apprehensive silence
fell over the Justice League while Catwoman’s voice continued on, filing the
silence with calm felinity.

“…which
is either an elegant metaphor, an amusing irony, a tragic irony, or infuriating
as hell. I wore goggles, so you can
guess how I’m inclined to see it.”

“Not
gonna work, honey,” Catwoman said sweetly, offering a nodding salute with the
baton as she turned to the door with a cheery.
“G’night everybody, try the veal.”

“Catwoman,
wait,” Batman called abruptly, as did Flash.

“The
rest of you can show yourselves out,” Batman added hatefully, glaring at
Flash.

“Zee,
seriously, is this for real?” Green Arrow was saying.

“My
wings are on fire,” Hawkman declared, standing over the smoldering remains.

“You
guys are so screwed,” Catwoman muttered, as Superman finally put out the fire.

“I
evael won,” Zatanna declared.

Catwoman
leaned in and spoke confidentially to Batman, “The AA definition of insanity
is doing the same thing over and over again, exactly the same way, and expecting
a different result.”

Although
she had spoken softly, Superman turned slowly toward her and Batman, and she
acknowledged that he was listening by making her next comment in a normal tone
of voice and speaking pointedly in his direction.
“And much as I would love to stick around for Step 4:
‘Making a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourselves’ (and
God help you all on Step 8: ‘Making a list of all persons you’ve harmed and
making amends’), I wore goggles. I wore goggles and this idiotic biker chick getup in which
I have no goddamn tits. So
rather than stick around for what I’m sure will be the best bloody dinner
theatre since the Roxy/Ivy catfight, I’m going home for a full fucking bodypeel!”

She
turned and stormed towards the door, waving off Batman on the one side and Green
Arrow on the other with a venomous “Nobody fucking touch me, I wore
GOGGLES!”

“NAMOWTAC
POTS!” Zatanna called out.

“AAARRRGGGHHH,”
Catwoman screamed, never breaking stride.
The frustrated wail grew fainter, fainter, and was then punctuated by the
violent slamming of the front door.

In
the battle-torn study of the anomaly, the usually sound plaster rained a thin
sprinkling of dust down onto the Justice League in response to Catwoman’s
vicious door-slam.

“Out
the front door,” Superman noted in the present, lightly directing focus from
the phantom-League’s embarrassment. “How
will she—”

“Get
back to the cave?” Batman completed the thought, “Around to the rose garden,
past the conservatory and down through the Batmobile entrance. The rate she’s going, it will take her about 5 minutes.”

“I
see. We should wait until she’s
safely back before closing the portal,” Superman suggested.

Batman
grunted and Hella nodded; then she looked around curiously.

“Where
is Etrigan?” she asked in her usual monotone.

Jason
shut his eyes, as if a heavy, painful weight had settled again on his shoulders.

“He
is… in the dining room, he followed Alfred to the dining room. I can sense him. The
magic shackles that bind our souls are back in place. Though he is still free physically in this world, we are
joined again as we were before. Once
either of us speaks the incantation, it will be as it was.”

“Jason,
I’m sorry,” Superman said sincerely.

“Don’t
be. A world where Etrigan runs free
is… not something you want to experience, certainly not a world to have risked
what we have risked in order to preserve.”

“POTS,
she says!” they heard, distant but distinct in the cave.
“’Cause when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything you see as
a nail. Smug, self-righteous—‘I made this mess,’ she says—Sure fucking did, sweetheart, and I had to
wear east end gutter trash goggles to clean it up—POTS, my sweet purple ass,
you parched…”

Batman
nodded curtly at Hella, and she lowered her hands, closing her eyes.
She pursed her lips and blew a wispy glowing mist which slowly filled the
room.

Catwoman’s
voice grew louder as she crossed the cave and approached the stairs to the
study.

“…like
to see how you’re gonna manage now, Cupcake.
Learn to drive or take the bus. Pay $85 for a shampoo and set then get caught in the rain and
ruin it, heh. Iron a wine stain
into your favorite blouse. And oh
yes, in at least one reality the almost-wife of the richest man in the country
would like to ruin your life. Good
luck with that one…”

The
remaining Leaguers and the physical debris of their anomaly dissolved into
nothingness as it came into contact with the white filmy mist, and Catwoman’s
voice, which had been growing steadily louder, now grew softer—

“…only
booking you’ll be getting for the next 5 years is the Turtle Spirit Indian
Casino in Bottleneck, North Dakota—opening for TinaYothers…”

—as the mist reached the clock passage and the wall separating study from cave
passage solidified.

Almost
immediately after the clock reset itself into physical reality, it clicked and
opened, and Catwoman stepped through. She
glared around the room, exuding a fierce and feral hostility, so much so that,
as her eyes landed on Superman and then Batman, one could almost envision a
wildcat angrily thumping her tail, riling for a fight.

“Gentlemen,”
she snapped with quiet irritation. “Your
League sucks.”

“khm,
well,” Superman coughed, as if to move on to a new subject.

“Welcome
back, Selina,” Jason said mildly.

˜˜And
well done, Sister,˜˜
Hella’s mindvoice added.

Catwoman
said nothing in reply but merely stared, intently, at Batman.
A tense, silent moment stretched into two, then five, then nine.

Superman
coughed and nodded toward the door. Jason
and Hella filed out awkwardly, while the grandfather clock ticked, ominously
underscoring the complete absence of any other sound in the room. Superman fell into line behind Hella, glanced back for a
split second at Batman and Catwoman, and then left the two alone.
The moment hung suspended in the icy stillness of a Gotham rooftop.
And then—

Selina
lunged forward and threw her arms fiercely around Batman’s waist, burying her
face between his neck and shoulder.

She
hugged him tighter but said nothing. After
a long moment, he began softly rubbing her back, and at last she spoke.

“I
wore goggles,” she managed weakly.

“I
know. But they’re gone
now.”

“Awful
black-zip-biker outfit.”

“You’re
purple again,” he assured her.

“And
no hair. Short awful hair.”

He
silently stroked the long curly locks that poured out the back of her cowl.

“And
I was like an A-cup,” she moaned.

“You’re
fine now,” he noted.

“Double-A,”
she said.

“You
saved the world, Selina.”

“Like
the battery,” she sobbed.

He
shifted his weight, very slightly, producing the effect of a gentle rocking.
Through this comforting motion, Selina felt his chest rumble with the
rhythmic puffy-grunt which marked that alternate Batman’s laugh.
Selina’s half of the embrace began to vibrate with a weary chuckle as
she thought about that laugh and the subject which provoked it in the other
world: Felix Faust and the wand-kabob.

“Well,”
she said finally, pulling back with a tired smile, “That’s it for me and the
cosmic FUBARs. Next time anything
needs saving, Spitcurl can go. Say, do you think his heat vision would be
capable of some kind of low level laser-graft skin peel?
I think I could just about live with him seeing me naked to get that top
level of skincells that touched the ick–gogglesuit burned away all at once.”

He
stared as he used to when she made some rooftop proposition and he couldn’t
tell if she was serious. Realizing
it was better to play along than mutely gape, he permitted himself a lip-twitch
as he said:

“He
does owe me a favor.”

“You
all owe me a favor,” Selina said archly.
“I wore goggles.” She
shuddered and then sighed, “Guess I’ll settle for a very long, very hot
shower.”

She
turned towards the door, pulling off her cowl as she did, and then froze, almost
as if belatedly hit with Zatanna’s parting POTS.
She turned back and regarded Batman thoughtfully.

“By
the way,” she said tenderly. “Just
in case you were thinking along the same lines as those other Bruce
Waynes, wondering… worrying… if Zatanna had done anything to change
me?”

She
walked up to him and softly tapped the side of his cowl, indicating clearly that
it should be removed. He hesitated
for a split second, then took it off.

“I
know Zatanna had nothing to do with my choice to stop stealing, Bruce, for the
same reason you knew the logs were wrong. You
change someone’s thoughts, you have to put something new in place of the old,
right? And you can only do that
convincingly if you know and understand who they are.
You had a chunk of time where your memories just weren’t you. You were
Zatanna’s idea of you: a flighty, shallow, middleclass, less-educated,
less-sophisticated nitwit’s idea of ‘Batman.’
Well as little as they understand you, m’love, that League of yours
haven’t any clue whatsoever about me.”

She
paused, awaiting some grunt of acknowledgement.
When it didn’t come, she continued.

“Do
you know when I made the decision to stop stealing, Bruce?”

“After
the Mad Hatter affair,” he graveled definitely.

She
shook her head no.

“No,
not the last actual theft, but the choice.
When I stopped at first, it was ‘for now.’
It wasn’t a life choice. I
was datingBatman and that was complicated enough without running
into each other at Tiffany’s after hours.
So I tapered off. But
it wasn’t… it wasn’t what you thought, what I let you think.
It wasn’t a conscious decision that the last thing I took was the last
thing I would ever take. Not until
Halloween that second year, not until that costume store, ‘Come As You’re
Not.’”

His
eyes drilled into hers, darting back and forth from her right to her left as the
bat-‘density shift’ rose and fell, intensifying then dropping out completely
as never before.

“I
don’t understand,” he said finally.

“You
came to lunch that day at d’Annunzio’s with news about the folklore
museum,” Selina said gently. “The
Sherlock Holmes exhibit, a costume party to kick it off… I’d never seen you
like that. You were so excited.
Right after lunch, we went to get costumes.
The store was called ‘Come As You’re Not,’ and you went ahead of me
into the big warehouse they had in the back…” she paused, surprised at how
her heart and breathing quickened as she spoke.
“When I got back there, I walked through the door… and there you
were, collecting pieces for a Sherlock Holmes costume.
You’d just found a tweed jacket. You
were so—It was so completely YOU, and at the same time it was so
unlike any part of you I had ever seen and I—I…
It just hit me. How I loved
you, how deep I was in. This was
it; this was my life now. And that
was that.”

“…”

“Does that really strike
you as something Miss Tophat-and-Fishnets could have invented?”

A warm silence passed between
them for a few breathless seconds and then he finally spoke.

“No.”

“Meow.”
She smiled. “Now that we’ve got that cleared up, I’m going to take
that shower.”